Kindred

Octavia Butler

The Fight, Parts 1–5

The Fight, Parts 6–8, page 2

page 1 of 2

Summary: The Fight, Part 6

Sarah tells Dana that Margaret went to Baltimore. Rufus
is running a fever, so Dana gives him some of the aspirin she brought
in her bag. Nigel tells Dana that the doctor can’t come yet, and
Weylin has ordered her to stay the night with Rufus. He also says
that Rufus hired a preacher to marry him and Carrie. Dana thinks
to herself that no slave marriages are legal, whether performed
by a preacher or not. Nigel says that Weylin now understands that
Dana is a time traveler, and so does he. He asks whether it was
Isaac who beat up Rufus, and Dana nods. In the morning, Dana and
Rufus share breakfast. They discuss Weylin. Rufus calls him a fair
man. Dana thinks to herself that he’s not fair, but neither is he
a monster. He is just an ordinary man who does the things an ordinary
man of his time is supposed to do. For the first time, Rufus questions
Dana’s youthful appearance. She explains that when she returns home, mere
days pass for her, while years pass for him. Rufus shows her a few
brief letters from Kevin and agrees to send Kevin a letter Dana writes.

The doctor comes and speaks insultingly to Dana. She goes
to the cookhouse, where Sarah tells her that Margaret left after
giving birth to twins who died in infancy. Rufus later tells Dana
that Luke was sold because Weylin got sick of him acting white.
Rufus warns Dana that if she acts like Luke, Weylin could sell her
too. He says Nigel ran away but was caught, whipped, and brought
back. Rufus finds a book on slavery that Dana brought from 1976.
She realizes that people crucial in African-American history—Sojourner
Truth, Frederick Douglass, Harriet Tubman, Nat Turner—could be compromised
if this modern book falls into the wrong hands. Worried about what
his father will do if he finds it, Rufus makes Dana burn it. She
agrees, although for a while she tries to hold on to a map, thinking
she could use it to run away. Rufus tells her that the book and
the map are irrelevant because she is home.

Summary: The Fight, Part 7

Alice and Isaac are caught on the fifth day after their
escape. Alice has become a slave because she helped a slave escape.
Rufus goes to town to buy her, asking Dana for some aspirin for
her before he leaves. Sarah, who is in charge of the house now that
Margaret is gone, tells Dana that it’s better to stay at the Weylins’
than to run away and be brought back half-dead. Rufus brings Alice
home. She is a bloody wreck. Weylin will not pay for a doctor to
treat any slave, so Dana tries to help her at Rufus’s request. She
asks for salt water, which Rufus fears will hurt Alice, but Dana
shows him her own back with its healed wounds to prove that soap
and brine work.

Summary: The Fight, Part 8

It turns out that Alice’s injuries are mostly dog bites.
Rufus tells Dana that he sent the letter to Kevin. He also tells
her that Isaac was sold to a trader going to Mississippi. Sarah
tells Dana that the slave traders cut off Isaac’s ears. Dana is
angry that Rufus, who raped Alice, is now getting her to himself.
Sarah worries that Dana’s frank talk is going to get her in trouble.
She tells Dana that Alice will take her place in Rufus’s bedroom,
and Dana explains that her relationship with Rufus is not sexual.
She says that Kevin is her husband. Sarah says that the father of
her older children, a white man, used to beat her. Sarah recommends
that Dana ask Nigel whether Rufus really mailed the letter to Kevin.

Analysis: The Fight, Parts 6–8

Rufus’s charming ways makes it easy, for Dana and for
us, to forget that his behavior is frequently monstrous. He courteously
asks Dana for items from her handbag, when it would be easy for
him to take them without asking. In many ways, he seems to love
Alice. He is horrified by her injuries, he demands that Dana help
Alice, and he treats her gently. Despite his courtliness, however,
Rufus behaves terribly again and again. In part, this is because
of his place in society: He is a white man in antebellum Maryland.
According to the mores of his time, only the wills of white men
matter, and every other member of society must bow before them.
Even when Alice is a free woman, therefore, Rufus sees her as his
property because she is black. And even though he understands that
Dana is from another time, he expects her, too, to obey his commands,
because she is a black woman. Rufus’s bad behavior must also be
chalked up to his specific upbringing, however. His mother coddled
him and failed to discipline him. His father set a violent example
for him and physically abused him. As a result, Rufus grows into
an unprincipled and violent adult. He believes that whatever he
wants is moral, simply because he wants it. He draws on his considerable
reserves of charisma, but when charisma doesn’t get him what he
wants, he unrepentantly resorts to physical force. When Alice will
not agree to have sex with him, he rapes her. He sees nothing wrong
with the rape and is surprised that it enrages Isaac. In his mind,
the rape was logical: He asked Alice nicely for what he wanted,
but when she said no, he never considered accepting frustration
or abandoning his desire.

Butler emphasizes that both black and white women are
subordinated in 1800s Maryland. Sarah, Margaret,
and Dana have all been subjected to some level of abuse by the men
in their lives. Sarah’s plight is worst. The father of her older
children was a slaveholder who subjected her to physical and sexual
abuse. He claimed to love her, but he beat her repeatedly. Sarah
would not have been able to repel his sexual advances without risking
her life. Margaret’s case is less dire. Weylin does abuse her and
neglect her, but her race gives her more power in her relationship
than Sarah had in hers. Still, Margaret’s weak personality and childishness
make it hard for her to exercise any control even over the household,
which is nominally her sphere. She is dominated by her husband and
her son. Dana’s situation is most complicated. Although she is a
free woman from a free society, Dana does not enjoy an entirely
equal partnership with her husband. Kevin is controlling, and he
tends to see his wife as a secretarial figure. More problematic,
traveling to 1800s Maryland forces Dana and
Kevin to see their marriage in an ugly historical context. As a
white man and a black woman in the 1970s, they
face discrimination. As a white man and a black woman in the 1800s,
however, they face the perception that Dana “belongs” to Kevin.